Chapter 16
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Translator: True Detective
Chapter: 15
Chapter Title: Seal - 2
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"What... what did you just do?"
"I killed a man."
The girl's tone was calm. Gentle. The mismatch between her words and their meaning made it feel impossibly light, like saying the weather was nice today or lunch had been delicious.
I lowered my eyes. Beneath my gaze writhed the man's corpse, wriggling like a bug. No doubt about it. It was unmistakably the Wind Piercing Sword, the one who had been threatening Elder Huang.
I hadn't done it myself, yet the world spun dizzily before me. Did she even know what she'd done?
This wasn't something you could beg mercy for and walk away. The Tian Clan was relentless. Vicious. They took care of their own in the most gruesome ways. And the Wind Piercing Sword had been a precious asset.
No clan could survive without force. They needed escorts for their caravans, men to flaunt their power on escort missions. In all of Jiangming, there were only nine such experts—and the Tian Clan had five of them.
And now one was dead.
Tongue lolling out long. Mouth foaming with blood.
Someone would come for payback.
"Do you have any idea what you've just done?"
"Yeah. I killed a man."
The girl answered. Her expression was innocent. I opened my mouth, then gave up.
A chill ran through me. I couldn't help but tremble. The terror etched into my bones took over. Fear of the clan as an entity.
The Dragon-Phoenix Gathering was just around the corner. It was where all the mid- and small-sized clans of Guangdong gathered, and they craved to show off more than anyone.
No one could predict what a fired-up Tian Clan might do. They'd hate her with a vengeance. I knew it in my marrow. When an organization that ruled a city hated one person.
The scale of violence was different. The methods were different. My father's downfall hadn't been just a tale of brute force. The Tian Clan truly dominated Jiangming.
Mobilizing everything the clan had against one individual.
Everyone knew it. Some had lived it firsthand.
All I could do was grit my teeth and endure with everything I had.
Yet the girl just stood there, looking at me.
"Why did you do it?"
"Who knows."
I had to ask. Was she an outsider who didn't know better? Had she snapped in a burst of righteous fury? I wanted to believe there was some reason.
But her world held no such thing. The girl stood with the sunset at her back, gazing at me. She showed no resolve or fear.
A cold winter wind swept her hair.
"It's dry out today."
"...?"
"You know how on days like this, wildfires start easily? Dry leaves rub together, and whoosh—flames erupt."
"What are you talking about all of a sudden?"
The girl said no more. Suddenly, I felt like a fool.
Everything around me felt like a dream.
The Wind Piercing Sword, pierced through the heart and dead. The girl before him. The beautiful winter sunset. The entire scene stepped boldly toward my heart.
The winter mountains in the distance. The land dyed by the sunset glowed as if ablaze. Ridges shooting out crimson light, parched dead trees lining the foothills. Everything draped in scarlet.
Shadows played across the girl's face in that light.
The girl, with burning mountains at her back, smiled faintly. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.
"That's why."
Because it was dry. So she killed a martial artist.
Sabak sabak. The girl approached me. I couldn't even think to move. The sound of her skirt hem dragging on the ground nailed my feet in place.
She stopped right in front of me. Her face.
Skin white as snow, streaked with red blood. Black eyes piercing my heart.
"You wanted to kill him too, didn't you?"
She drew it out of me. With that soft, gentle voice.
The day we first met, in the pawnshop, even on the road when we saw the Wind Piercing Sword.
The sticky murderous intent lurking in my heart.
The world is vast. Heroes are as common as grains of sand. Tales of those who can't tolerate injustice, who won't forgive grudges, who treat friends' plights as their own—they're everywhere.
But flip it around, and what emerges are the masses lording over the powerless like kings. That's what meddlesome swordsmen really are.
To the World Dragon, to Flying Pig, to the Wind Piercing Sword. To anyone. To every bastard strutting around with a blade, oppressing people.
I wanted to scream at them, torment them, swing violence back. I imagined twisting a knife deep into their hearts with all my strength. I wanted to lop off their heads. To repay the humiliation they'd heaped on me.
"You wanted payback, didn't you?"
Chivalry doesn't exist for farmers. It doesn't shield against martial artists' bullying. Their code isn't spoken aloud.
Only through blades and swords. Sometimes in even crueler ways.
If you can't take it, that's the end. They challenge you to fights with no tomorrow.
I thought about it constantly. My chest always felt stuffed full, suffocating. Breath came hard in that tightness.
Because nothing got better. No sign of improvement anywhere. Even if I threw everything away and charged in with resolve to explode... I no longer had faith I could withstand the World Dragon's blade.
Heroes and swordsmen are revered not for nothing. Respect, empathy... a touch of fear. And massive agreement. Because I wanted to be like that too. To repay every grudge against those who oppressed me.
The girl whispered. Her faint breath tickled my ear.
"I'll give you power stronger than anyone's."
Impulse.
The urge to believe it clashed with thoughts of my mother waiting at home. Conflicting emotions swirled. I stood at the fork in the road.
Thinking, thinking, soothing myself, sorting my heart. When I finally came to my senses, she was gone. Only a voice like a breeze lingered in the sunset alley.
We'll meet again.
Impossible.
I muttered it the whole way home. It had to be a bad joke. A bewitching people, fooling the masses.
Martial artists aren't the type to take lightly. Those who live by the blade, eat by the sword—they're different. Righteous or unorthodox, same thing.
Even the nameless thugs from the Black Dragon Sect had no hesitation beating people. Righteous heroes, who didn't need brutal intimidation, were even more ruthless.
They followed rules and righteousness because they were confident they'd win even if they held back. They honed killing arts their whole lives. Five years to enter, ten to mastery. They learned breathing techniques and swordsmanship from toddlerhood.
Even the Tian Clan's warriors were sky-high to ordinary folk.
Above them were first-rate warriors, and above those, the pinnacle realm. Legends of sword immortals achieved by Hua Mountain and Wudang Taoists, realms of immortality through the sword.
For a moment, I imagined myself swinging a blade like them. To become that, I'd need some absurd technique to forcibly open sealed meridians. I'd never heard of such a thing in the world.
"You're back?"
"Yeah."
Opening the brushwood door, I heard Mother's cough. That sound yanked me back to reality with a snap.
Mother's condition had improved some, but it still worried me. Someday I'd hire a good physician, but the money just wouldn't accumulate.
I vowed to take on extra work tomorrow as I lay in my room. In the darkness, thoughts bubbled up unbidden.
The World Dragon's mocking face, the young masters' raucous laughter, the Dragon-Phoenix Gathering... and the murder of the Wind Piercing Sword. All that pent-up rage would come back at me.
Probably even more viciously.
I remembered the girl's whisper. Her question: Did I want to grow strong? But I steeled my heart.
Fifty wen buys a seom of rice. We'd survive winter on that one seom. Spring would follow winter, and then we could sow seeds again.
I still had things left.
A bumper crop might pay off debts. Saving bits of the fifty wen from the World Dragon could afford a physician skilled with lungs.
If I scraped together enough silver, maybe bribe an official's runner to escape this place.
How nice that would be. If I could just slip this grasp, outrun the World Dragon's clutches, it was still doable. I told myself that. At least I wanted to give Mother some comfort.
By leaving this cursed Jiangming land. If there was some kind-hearted nearby village... living there.
Farming a few patches, taking carpentry gigs to supplement—we could live ordinarily.
I'd endured because I couldn't throw away that future. I was angry, suffocated, but helpless. Eight years of it. Too late to quit now.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pushed forward. If I endured, good days would come. Even if problems seemed endless, they wouldn't last forever. I could wear them down, outlast them, I thought.
I could do more.
In the side room lay my ailing mother. Too precious a presence in my life to abandon.
So I could endure more.
For now.